Nevada High Court Taking Appeal of Inmate Sought in Colorado

The Nevada Supreme Court is taking up a prison inmate's appeal of an extradition order sending him to Colorado to face murder charges in four slayings in suburban Denver dating to 1984.

Friday, August 10th 2018, 9:22 AM PDT

Updated:

Wednesday, January 9th 2019, 1:56 PM PST

The Nevada Supreme Court is taking up a prison inmate's appeal of an extradition order sending him to Colorado to face murder charges in four slayings in suburban Denver dating to 1984.

Alexander Christopher Ewing's lawyer, Martin Wiener of Reno, declined to comment Wednesday about a high court order on Monday that set an April 15 filing deadline for Ewing's appeal.

Ewing, now 58, has been in prison in Nevada since 1984.

He's serving eight-to-40 years for attacking a couple with an ax handle near Las Vegas after escaping from sheriff's deputies while being transported to Arizona to face an attempted murder charge.

Colorado authorities say DNA evidence links Ewing to the hammer slaying of Patricia Louise Smith in Lakewood and the deaths of three Bennett family members in Aurora.

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Original Story: Investigators in Colorado have charged a Nevada inmate with killing a woman and a family of three, including a 7-year-old girl, with a hammer in attacks in suburban Denver more than 30 years ago.

Law enforcement officials announced Friday that Alexander Christopher Ewing is being transferred from a Nevada prison to face charges in the 1984 slayings of Patricia Louise Smith in the Denver suburb of Lakewood and three members of the Bennett family in nearby Aurora.

He is also suspected of sexually assaulting the children.

Ewing is serving a sentence at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center for attacking a couple with an ax handle near Las Vegas in 1984 after escaping from deputies in an Arizona case.

The two cases were tied together by DNA evidence in 2002.

"Scientists were able to establish that the profile in the Smith homicide matched the DNA profile that had been obtained nine years earlier in the Bennett homicide, confirming a link that investigators had long suspected in those cases," says John Camper, Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Ewing won't be eligible for parole in Nevada until 2021.

Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt released this statement:

"From leading a statewide initiative to test Nevada’s nearly 8,000 backlogged sexual assault kits, to ensuring that DNA samples could be lawfully obtained from eligible convicted felons in Nevada prisons, I remain a strong believer that law enforcement should never quit in the pursuit of justice for victims. Cases like these are the reason that from the day I was sworn in, I made forensic testing of DNA a top priority for law enforcement in Nevada. I am so proud of my office’s hard work on forensic DNA testing that continues to bear fruit. I commend the district attorneys and investigators in Colorado for their relentless pursuit of justice for these cold case victims and their families.”